


Take from me my lace (and lipstick too heavy for summer)

by metal_eye



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ear Piercings, Frottage, Gender Issues, Genderfluid, Harry in Lace, Harry in Lingerie, Harry in Lipstick, Insecurity, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, M/M, Too Many Metaphors, Validation, basic cheese, brief mention of Harry's friendship with Alessandro Michele, brief pain kink, language wank
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 18:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metal_eye/pseuds/metal_eye
Summary: Harry likes to wear lace and lipstick. Louis lets him.





	Take from me my lace (and lipstick too heavy for summer)

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be Met Gala fic back in May, but of course it takes me forever to write anything. So here we are three months later with a story I'm not sure does anything coherent? but says some things I wanted to say anyway.
> 
> Thanks to my usual chat of lovelies, but especially [twopoppies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twopoppies/pseuds/twopoppies), because I definitely would not have finished this without her support. Hell, I probably wouldn't be writing fic for this fandom at all without her. Sorry I can't write smut, dear. Mwahs.
> 
> Title is a combination of a lyric from "Leather and Lace" (of course) and a line from a Nicole Blackman poem that resonated.
> 
> Oh, and there's a playlist! 
> 
> (I needed 70s drag queens)
> 
> Lola / The Kinks  
Venus / Television  
Avenging Annie / Andy Pratt  
Ink Man / Kevin Harrison  
Walk on the Wild Side / Lou Reed  
Rose Tint My World / Rocky Horror Picture Show  
See You on Mean Street / The Soft Explosion  
Free / Death  
Walking in Space / Hair Original Cast  
New Eyes / Adam Lambert  
Madame George / Van Morrison  
Coz I Love You / Slade  
Get Down, Make Love / Queen  
Elton's Song / Elton John

It’s not that he wants to be a woman.

Women are fine. No, that’s the wrong word — they’re _ finely tuned _ , lovely bits of bone wrought over joints, arched recesses in skin revealing softer spaces, or existing abdomens of padded potential, smart and fisted and impressively braced against the greater world. He respects women, loves them often, admires their insides and protected growth, but he doesn’t want to _ be _ one.

He’s unsure sometimes of what he wants to be, though he relishes taut angles and dipped hipbones — in others and himself. He dreams of shoulder blades lurching outward like stalwart sails on a ship; he is always searching across broad expanses of unmarred chest, charting smooth territory in circles like a mapmaker intent on discovering new civilizations. He is quite happy with the square angle at the side of his face and the acutely pointed Adam’s apple just below it. He’s quite certain he would not give them up.

But here, hidden in the walk-in closet, fingering black organza and the lace-up nightgown he mail-ordered from a highbrow lingerie website — here he finds himself wishing his wants were _ easier _ . Easier to be hard as nettles, a steel drum, strong enough to shake every insecurity.

He loves wearing lace. He loves the pouty pink lipstick he puts on to go with it. It’s the rest of the world that doesn’t get it.

Luckily, the person waiting outside this closed door loves everything, and all of him, just enough for the world to fall away.

Harry takes a few breaths and fans the back of his neck, makes sure the buttons at the top of the chemise are fastened. He puts a bare foot forward into the doorframe, testing the space.

“Louis?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“I’m coming out.”

He turns the long knob halfway down, unlocking the door, and steps forward into the bedroom. He sees the burgundy carpet he knows so well, the dresser only a pace ahead, the mirror across the room capturing the split second he reaches up to finger the earring on his right ear — a last-minute addition from the jewelry drawer that went completely unused until his recent spontaneous outing with Alessandro and a stud gun. One side. “Ah, bellissima!” he’d heard. The feminine.

There is no speech, at first, and it’s exquisite — a complete lack of awkward guttural appraisals or vocal validations, just silence. Louis rises from the bed as if to immediately bow, but glides across the room and inhales instead.

Harry can sense the once-over, but it feels precious instead of dirty, cavernous more than rushed. Then he lifts his head and lets his eyes fall on Louis’ face. It’s a stencil, now, perfectly prepared for his gaze, but he’s always waiting to see what medium might take hold between the grooves.

Tonight, it’s delight.

Harry stills as Louis runs the reverse side of his hand up the sheer front of the chemise. Still no speech, like he’s aware of how fragile Harry feels, and that a single word might pierce the veil beyond repair. Harry watches the two of them in the mirror across the room, the back of Louis’ head moving with his eyes, his step back (or in the mirror, forward), standing on tiptoe, and sliding a set of fingers underneath the lace collar at Harry’s neck, pressing thoughtfully against Harry’s throat.

Harry breathes out, wholly relieved to be recognized as _ real _ in this, like it’s been a daydream until these actual eyes and hands acknowledged him. Harry can feel the fitted front of the chemise stretched around his wider shoulders, the netted black fabric scooped strongly across the curve of his lower back, the sheer organza pulled tight and stressed where his thighs connect — it always required a fixed stare to come to life, and now it has.

Thus absolved, Harry speaks first.

“Do you like it?”

Louis’ geological jaw miraculously moves, though Harry sometimes forgets it’s not the stone sinew of something a Vatican reveler carved. “I can’t even breathe,” says Louis. “Not properly, anyway. Every time I try, there’s something—” A hiccupped stop. “Is that an _ earring _ ?”

Harry looks down and then up again, a nervous gesture, and brings his fingers to his right ear. They stroke the pearl, surrounding it. “They pierced it with a stud,” he stammers, stating the obvious because he can feel a shiver coming on, “but I took it out a little early…”

The joy on Louis’ face reminds Harry of why he can do this. It’s not a fetish thing, though he harbors no judgement towards those who take on entirely different personalities as an exercise in titillation. The lace is forbidden in that case; it represents some transgression not allowed in regular life and gives rise to repeated names, garter snapping, saucy rehearsed lines, a planned scene containing safe words and faux-surprise and a kind of sacred artifice.

It’s not the same for Harry. He has no different name to distance himself; he’s not posturing or playing a character. He has no rehearsed speech or movements blocked out. He hesitates because the lace, the collar, the corset-like bodice — they’re a section of him, attached as any vital organ, pulled from within and wrestled into the open air like a subject of evisceration, searching for a safe place to land, which is most often the dependable and graceful field of Louis’ trust.

There are padded fingers encircling the pearl hung from his ear with reverence and curiosity, thumbing the elegance, twisting the gold post before an inevitable tug. It’s enticing and almost minute, the pause between awareness and experimenting, like a kitten pulling at a piece of yarn.

“Funny,” says Louis, tugging again. “That weight. It’s like fruit, or something. It almost makes me want to—”

Then he’s licking with a soft tongue, noise and moisture, shifting conditioned devour to something tentative. Harry closes his eyes, smiling, weighing the moment and putting his tongue between each tooth like he’s searching for a new taste. He turns his head, keens to accommodate the mouth around the earring and by extension his own ear, opens his lips to make a sound. The tongue twirls over the bee design and attached floral gold but is cautious with the metal post.

It’s still a bit sore, see. There’s half the beauty. That Louis is simultaneously teasing and tearing at a relatively fresh wound. Harry can’t help but think of it as a kind of battle scar, something proven, a testament to sturdiness. See? Even if his soul is horribly fragile, _ nobody _ better fuck with his gay right ear.

A swallowing noise brings Harry back into his body. He reaches out blindly, looking for physical solace, and when he finds the solid human he wraps his long arms around him until the hands touch behind his neck, and then there are moans in time like symphonic beats.

An errant hand comes across Harry’s mouth, smearing his lip like intentionally messy modern art. Harry’s face is framed into the mirror, like a Basquiat. Baring his teeth cements the likeness before distraction comes in the form of lips moving towards his mouth.

“I love this,” says Louis, examining the lip smear on his palm and smiling at it. “Like physical proof of your give-no-fucks.”

“‘Rose wine,’” Harry quips, giddy. “S’what the shade is called.”

“Like I could drink it,” says Louis. “Heady.”

Harry brings a wide palm down Louis’ back with grateful authority. “Lipstick is so absolute,” he says. “There’s something about color, about its power.”

“Hmm. Can you look at me?”

It’s a loaded question, because the moment Harry’s face lines up with Louis’, Louis is pressing their faces together, hard, like he wants their skulls to breach skin and hook together into a symbiotic sculpture, teeth and all. And why should Harry stop him? Harry holds the front of his head as close as he can without hurting Louis. Between each kiss he intently tries to convey the love he holds, brain to brain, bone to bone, because his mouth so often stumbles and rambles and never gets to the point he wants to make. Real words are so weighted, a heart against a feather, sinking in inadequate balance.

Presses of lips and pulling back lead to a curled smile. “You’ve got ‘rose wine’ smeared across your chin,” says Harry. “I am _ on you _.”

Louis brings both hands up and turns them inwards toward the black lace collar as if to rip it in half. “I want you _ on me _in this. Just this. Pretty and pulled up from the bottom. Lipstick smears and that gorgeous pearl pulling on your face.”

“Pick me up?”

When Harry first grew taller than Louis, he pouted incessantly and kept trying to fold himself in two like a collapsing table — trying to become smaller because that was how he felt: a small spark looking ungainly up at the bright star of Louis. Damn his size. Not that it stopped them.

Louis wraps strong palms under Harry’s thighs, then hefts — with only a small amount of strain — Harry’s large frame, bright face pulled taut in concentration but still strumming with adoration.

And it’s true: Harry never gets enough of being deposited onto a bed. So lightly handled like a square of folded linen, he can feel the leadenness of his limbs fall away, heavy flesh-weights rendered immaterial just in time to accommodate a latent sense of nervousness at being scrutinized.

But Louis falls down and lies to Harry’s side like a living slice of protection, putting his left hand around Harry’s hip like a hooked cane pulling a performer off-stage to signal the cessation of performance. He pushes up the hem of Harry’s lace nightgown to make room for wandering fingers. “_ On me _ ,” says Louis, pads and nails fingerprinting his conviction on skin.

_ On you. _ Harry feels his hips pulse out of sheer contentment, grounded joy, utter ballast — he is low-braced and plants his feet for leverage. Then the loose chemise comes up and over, tickling a little like Louis is tinkering with a piano. As he often does.

This particular aspect of Harry’s prettiness has been kept off the paparazzi streets, away from the pages of legit music magazines, the center of problematic redemption. But here, lace drawn up and digits exploring every crevice, he is happy being _ just what he is _— this bizarre combination of wants and discomfort and acceptance and blushing like he stole his mother’s rouge. The black fabric holds taut like the cords of a suspension bridge, excitement speeding up like there’s been a burst of helium sent to speed up his syrupy voice — although ultimately, all that comes out is a decadent sigh.

They don’t even have to properly fuck. Stroking and sensations of coarse fabric do the job — Harry’s collar and earring kept sacred like he’s a secretary getting railed over a desk with perfect tie and ruffled blouse untouched. At some point Louis’ trousers disappear, and the uncovered half of Harry returns every pang of validation he’d received throughout the evening; he gives of himself with knowledge that his lace and lipstick are loved as wholly as the rest; he’s a carnival madame given a priceless gold necklace during her most vulnerable of afterglows.

They both breathe out. Harry laughs a little. Louis, now smeared in lipstick, grabs Harry’s hair and gives him a solid kiss. It’s the epoxy dripped on a wooden mural at the last moment — set in, finalized, saved as-is instead of overwritten.

Harry smiles, unhooks his pearl earring, and moves to pull the chemise over his head. “Shower?” he says. “Or… something else?”

The look on Louis’s face bridges pride and bewilderment, expression opened up like a screen door that can’t keep shut against the summer wind.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the fic, you can reblog the [tumblr post](https://metal-eye.tumblr.com/post/186868409232/take-from-me-my-lace-and-lipstick-too-heavy-for)!


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